Who Was Katharine Graham? 1st Woman To Be CEO Of A Fortune 500 Company

The first Woman CEO of the Washington Post, an American newspaper company, and consequently, also the first woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Katharine Meyer Graham was born in the city of New York on 16 June 1917. She presided over the position at a very crucial point, when The Post, as it is locally called in the US, played an integral role in bringing to light the Watergate conspiracy, subsequently leading to the resignation of the then US President Richard Nixon.

Katharine: The Revenue Maximiser For The Post

Being the first woman chief of an American Newspaper house, she grew the revenue for the company by over $1 Billion. Initially, she was working with San Francisco News, and later joined The Post in 1938, when her father Eugene Meyer bought it.

Her father passed on the baton of the chief to her husband, Philip Graham in 1959. Katherine got on the post after her husband, Philip took away his own life. In official capacities, she was the publisher from 1969 to 1979 and the board chair from 1973 to 1991. As the CEO of the Washington Post corporation in 1972, she became the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Katherine: The Stalwart 

Katherine was not just a great businesswoman, but also an astounding and brave writer. Her journalistic skills and fearless writings are idealized to date. She faced a lot of criticism from her male co-workers but chose to let them go unnoticed.

The initial difficulties faced by Graham and editor Bradlee came when they revealed the contents of the Pentagon Papers. Bradlee aired pieces on Watergate while few other news outlets were covering the story, thanks to Graham's support of Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's investigative research when they brought the story to Bradlee.

Graham faced one of the most well-known threats in American journalism history during the Watergate crisis. The incident happened in 1972 when reporter Carl Bernstein received a warning from Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, regarding an upcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." Bradlee removed several terms from her tweet, but The Post nevertheless published the comment. It was "especially strange of [Mitchell] to call me Katie, which no one has ever called me," as Graham subsequently noted.

Honors Conferred to Katherine

In 1988, Katherine was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography for her self-written memoir, Personal History. She was also the first lady to be elected to the board of directors at the Associated Press.

In 2002, US President George W. Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Graham, posthumously. Graham passed away in 2001, at the age of 84, leaving behind a legacy to be celebrated for years and decades to come.